I t's a brand new year, are you still making another set of New Year’s Resolutions? Many people do.

About twenty years ago, I stopped making them. Instead, daily after my personalized morning prayers, I remind myself that today may be the last day of my earthly life, that whatever work I do for the day is also a form of a prayer, an offering to serve my own God and my fellowmen. Unconsciously, I direct my life’s true north compass daily to a framed “RESOLUTION” (below) that hangs in my office.

How about you, as one human being, or as a community leader? Many of us seem dead at age 40 but only buried at age 80! Some of us contribute our energy (or the lack of it) to our own clubs or any organization, and cumulatively that degree of positive (negative) energy sipped into our own clubs and soon it contaminates others and then our club declines and for some weaker clubs they even die from man-made causes of death.

I am glad and have been blest that on my own way to heaven here on earth I have met many interesting, lively, inspiring individuals who have contaminated me with their vigor, spirit and love for life. One man I admire and respect is one who was not degreed (no college diploma) but quite educated about life and living, who told me early on, here in America, that education happens every day, even outside the classroom. The secret to success and fulfillment he shared with me is to be forever curious and excited all the time, like a toddler with a new toy, and become truly passionate with a new cause and/or being engaged in noble projects that also benefit others aside from one self. There should be a great project year after year, like an African safari or a religious pilgrimage, a new career that you are totally engaged and excited just preparing for it. That is a very-demanding formula but it is not impossible to do. I have applied that formula for several years now

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D ecades ago, sources of our excitement were different as younger people tend to be more materialistic and motivated by many physical attributes. To be young means you feel invincible. Trappings of worldly success such as new car, a bigger home, yachts, expensive vacations, excite many people. After 60, those “things” appear less important. I think I now understand why. But there are still many people, however, who grew older but never matured nor have become wiser. Bereft of spirituality or a sense of ethics and morality, they were caught in their own cobwebs of false pride and materialism, wearing their invisible masks daily pretending that they were super rich to be a able to buy their way out every time. For instance, lately I knew a few educated people, M.D.s at that, in their sixties and seventies who were still trying to prove to themselves that they were invincible by trying to out-smart the USA’s Medicare system and continued to bilk the system via fraudulent Medicare billings. But lo and behold, they were finally caught and finally been convicted. I really pity these people, (two are even a husband-and-wife team) as they will experience wearing those colorful prisoners’ garbs in their senior citizen years. Very sad. (If you want to know more details, e-mail me and I will e-mail you back the court-docket numbers and/or Los Angeles Times stories.)

W hen we become older (and hopefully wiser) we begin to realize that many things are not that important after all. Other intangible things appear to manifest and become more important, like our families and friends, our good health and balanced social and spiritual life. When we see our children and their own children playing, we are reminded daily of our faded youth. Even our theme songs change from “Hey Jude” by the Beatles and other energetic songs like ”Let’s Do it, Baby” to nostalgic songs like “Remember When” or "The Impossible Dream” by Frank Sinatra.

At 60, our vocabulary or topics of conversations also metamorphose from career paths to our kid’s education and now what healthy maintenance pills we are taking! At 65, we feel so guilty not at home at 7:00 pm whereas at 21, we were just preparing to leave home at 7:00 pm to hang out with friends. Our life’s paradigm and the same world seem different with other eyeglasses that offer us other perspectives. And with that change, we relive what our own parents often told us “Wait till you become a parent yourself”. For some of us, that is now being relieved by our own children who do not yet understand our own parental “wisdom”.

Ah, life is indeed a mystery to be lived, and not a problem to be solved ... That is the way it was, the way it is and the way it will be. Life simply is.

When you are gone, the world will continue as if you never lived on this planet … unless you are truly missed by those whom you have touched. And that is one area that true Servant Leaders are doing everyday to leave a legacy, to make this world a better place than we found it. Many people live their lives giving back to their community and their fellow men. You can see these "silent heroes" in many churches of all faiths. Many service associations like the Lions, Kiwanis or Rotary or religious missionaries, like Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity exemplify this Service above Self. Cumulatively, they contribute greatly to a better world for our children and their children. Let's all pray for them, and help them in any way we can, wherever we are!

May the New Year bring us all closer to our dreams and may our plans blessed by HIM that makes even the impossible become possible!

N ow here is:

RESOLUTIONS

By Lloyd Shearer

No one will ever get out of this world alive. Resolve, therefore, to maintain a reasonable sense of values.

Take care of yourself. Good health is everyone’s major source of wealth. Without it, happiness is almost impossible.

Resolve to be cheerful and helpful. People will repay you in kind.

Avoid angry, abrasive persons. They are generally vengeful.

Avoid zealots. They are generally humorless.

Resolve to listen more and to talk less. No one ever learns anything by talking.

Be chary of giving advice. Wise men don’t need it and fools won’t heed it.

Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these.

Do not equate money with success. There are many successful money-makers who are miserable failures as human beings. What counts most about success is how a person achieves it. # # #